Schola Campesina is an international agroecology school based in Italy (Biodistrict delle Via Amerina e delle Forre, Viterbo province).
Schola Campesina facilitates knowledge sharing among food producers’ organizations and other allies (academia, activists) on agroecology to strengthen agroecological organizations worldwide, including within global food and agriculture governance processes.
The 2015 Nyéléni International Forum for Agroecology serves as the conceptual foundation of Schola Campesina. We work to implement its principles and action plan with small-scale food producers’ organizations that identify with the food sovereignty movement, using the Nyéléni Declaration as the starting point for all our activities (trainings, participatory action research, etc.).
Schola Campesina APS is a legal association established in 2018 based in Gallese, in the Biodistrict della Via Amerina e delle Forre (Viterbo, Italy). The association comprises food producers and includes a coordinator (Andrea Ferrante) and a project manager (Caroline Ledant), along with a Communications and R&D team. Schola Campesina maintains strong connections with its territory and has established partnerships with many organizations worldwide working on food sovereignty and agroecology.
“The diverse knowledge and ways of knowing of our peoples are fundamental to Agroecology. We develop our ways of knowing through dialogue among them.”(diálogo de saberes).
Our learning processes are horizontal and peer-to-peer, based on popular education. They take place in our own training centers and territories (farmers teach farmers, fishers teach fishers, etc.), and are also intergenerational, with exchange of knowledge between youth and elders.
Agroecology is developed through our own innovation, research, and crop and livestock selection and breeding.“
Our pillars:
- Dialogue between ways of knowing (“diálogo de saberes”) and centrality of small-scale food producers’ knowledge;
- Centrality of social movements in governance spaces;
- Recognition of community collective rights stemming from individual rights;
- Farm autonomy, based on local knowledge, plant and animal genetic resources, energy and water resources;
- Human rights-based agricultural and food policies fostering community autonomy (vs. trade rules).
How do we operate?
- Our starting point is the local level, ensuring our position is rooted in a territory and community of knowledge – the bio-district represents these territorial roots;
- Our work is bidirectional: we influence global processes and simultaneously implement global outcomes at the local level;
- Our international school is inspired by La Via Campesina’s “agroecology schools”: horizontal pedagogy, “campesino a campesino,” and “diálogo de saberes”, mobilizing knowledge from peasants, academics, and activists;
- We emphasize languages as instruments of popular culture, aiming to go beyond “colonial” languages;
- Based near Rome (headquarters of all food and agriculture-related UN institutions), we have the unique advantage of organizing activities with peasants and activists from around the world to defend our peoples’ rights;
- Schola Campesina also serves as a center for Participatory Action Research;
- Schola Campesina stimulates co-production of knowledge through constructive dialogue between agroecology and food sovereignty allies.
Schola Campesina Onlus is an Italy-based international center for training and participatory research that strengthens producers’ organizations in their struggle for food sovereignty through knowledge recognition and sharing.
Grounded in the Nyéléni International Forum for Agroecology (2015) and on the principles of dialogo de saberes and popular education; it facilitates the exchange of peasant, academic and activist knowledge.
Through trainings and events Schola Campesina provides producers’ organizations with strategic information on global food and agriculture governance, strengthening their position within the Rome process.
The first training of Schola Campesina took place from Sept. 25 to Oct. 7 2017. It brought together 15 members of peasants’ organizations (LVC members) from around the world to share experiences and discuss issues related to, amongst others, the global governance of food and agriculture, peasants’ knowledge, peasants’ autonomy, agroecological practices, peasants’ global struggles, local and global food policies and women’s empowerment. It took place in a partnering farm in the Biodistrict of Viterbo Province, and also at the Rome-based agencies related to food and agriculture. Participants benefited from peasant and activist knowledge from all around the world. This first edition was funded by FAO / OPCP and Associazione Tulipano Bianco/Confeuro.
